


distant stars

by notdrunkenough



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3385394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notdrunkenough/pseuds/notdrunkenough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mother, Jon, New York -- Laurie's life is filled with fading stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	distant stars

 

She would see less pure intentions in him following her to the roof that late at night if she were the woman she was today—but she’s not, and she doesn’t. She’s sixteen, and he’s dressed as an owl.

Lighting up her cigarette, she smiles, and watches the smoke drift into the stars.

“I love stargazing,” he says.

She smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

Larry takes her stargazing once—a telescope and everything. He shows her where Jupiter is, and how to find home by just watching the sky. It's no use though, she's only there to watch them glitter, and she quickly forgets every lesson he gives. Except one.

“Some of the stars you see are already dead and burnt out,” he tells her, “the light takes so long to reach earth, that it seems like they're alive, but they're not."

It feels wrong, seeing them shine but knowing they’ve already faded. She tries to feel sad but mostly she feels nothing.

 

 

Her mother was a star.

Smiling, she listens to the only father she ever knew laugh about the men who turned themselves in just so they wouldn't have to tarnish that beauty; that men are in jail because her mother is a star of justice.

That star shines bright in the little girl's mind—curled hair, diamond eyes, hour-glass figure, and a million watt smile—and she tries to find the hero.

They divorce, there’s a secret no one will speak but Laurie knows is there. Little Laurie looks into the past and find a shining star she somehow forgot and coos to her loving pets that she’s going to be a mask when she grows up.

 

 

The shine remains, but only as long as Laurie that memory in the distance, untainted by what she knows now. She separates _Silk_ _Sceptre_  from _her mother_ and tells herself that there might have been a time when that bitter woman, that drunk, my hero, my star, her mother were one in the same, the fact never truly settles and never truly do become on in her mind.

Laurie holds it in a kaleidoscope, never dragging it closer, and keeps this image of this woman who might be her mother in a special place filled with character villains and childish crime. It doesn’t exist with her mother and drinking and death because she won’t let it.

She clutches to the admiration of a child to her hero and keeps it just that. She remembers a brilliant star and she remembers a hero.

 

 

Sitting in the gutter, beaten and sore, listening to jabs of villains call her a slut and a whore, the star shines a little dimmer and sometimes fades into a dark decay of reality instead of her cheaply produced hero comic book.

—but she’ll wipe the blood away, and try and save the day. Though she doesn’t know it, tomorrow this day will shine a little brighter, just like her mothers.

 

* * *

 

 

He's put upon a pedestal for her—glorious and perfect. He curves the light and the sight makes her heart fly. It skips a beat, and almost falls to her knees and prays.

In an instant, she's back at church; six-years-old and willing to believe in anything. A pastor preaches to her about the love and grace of God and nothing sounds more welcoming than his endlessly unconditional and loving embrace.

 

 

He stands before her on an old fractured stand. The pedestal has rotten from within. Whatever he can represent just leaves her despondent and desolate.

The screaming won't come because it doesn’t even matter, because he doesn’t care and because she’s tired, sore, lonely and willing to grasp one more time, over and over again, for the endless love of God. More than anything, she scared to learn that maybe God doesn’t love her, that maybe God doesn’t love anything. Maybe God just doesn't care.

In an instant, she’s sitting in front of the television, seven-years-old and waiting for her mother to tell her why God let’s bad things happen at all. She doesn’t believe the answer, she clutches to it anyway. She needs to.

 

 

The sting of his skin against her tongue builds up like static. It’s old and worn now, and makes her bones creak in all the wrong ways. All it makes her believe is that Her God feels for her is indifference.

—but the memory shines bright. He pulls her closer, and she breathed in time with her God. She’s simple and easy to please and he tells her that she makes him _feel_ like—and that’s good enough.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In a ship above the clouds, a voice reads an endless list of the dead over the radio, and Dan snores. She dully blots the stars above out with her fingertips, and waits for tears to come—but they never do. She finds no sadness inside.

Maybe she lacks compassion. Maybe she lacks scale.

Maybe she’s just tired.

She thinks of shining stars: her mother, Jon, New York, and how brightly they remain, shimmering in the back of her mind. She holds them in her kaleidoscope and smiles.

She thinks of the stars above her head, dead, and yet still they still dance around her fingertips.

She thinks of death, and shining on, and feels nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Welp.
> 
> Had this in here forever and decided to finally post it.


End file.
